The 47th Problem
In this album, Joe Cassady and the West End Sound, more than most singers and bands, resubmit familiar experiences to us afresh. Maybe songwriter Cassady’s "Willie Mays" is influenced by Bob Dylan and Jacques Levy’s "Catfish," about Catfish Hunter, another baseball star, but like the album’s other ten original soft-to-driving rock tracks, this song sparkles in its own right: "Pinstripes and diamonds and overhead lights / Million mile stars twinkle through million dollar nights."
Cassady explicitly acknowledges his Dylan influence. Especially when spinning out his prosaic lines while fronting his ragtag-sounding, deceptively musical band, he makes big-time hay from ground that Dylan already plowed. But part of his success is his individuality, and he diverges significantly from Dylan. His singing is more conversational, less apocalyptic, and reading the lyrics, you think about Allen Ginsberg -- another acknowledged occupier of Cassady’s brain.
Shu Nakamura on several instruments, Robert Bohnomme on drums, Anthony Bax on percussion, and Aaron Gardner on bass shine more than players in a classic Dylan model band -- Nakamura in particular, with his hot guitar solos and catchy introductions. The sound needed a bit more work, but we'd want to keep the "mess" that keeps the listener hopping.
Cassady’s writing on personal relationships and literature are sophisticated and witty but not in a popular vein. Writing excitingly on public matters might be a useful page to borrow from Dylan. Cassady's big talent deserves a serious following, and the timing is right.
David J. Cantor - Soundstage! (Mar 4, 2009)
Though founded in Manhattan’s quite urban Lower East Side in 2005, Joe Cassady and the West End Sound come off like sonic cousins to The Drive-By Truckers with a touch of early ’90s Soul Asylum recklessness. Cassady and crew spin dizzy tales such as “Beirut Boogie” and a fine homage in “Willie Mays.” In ballads like “Find My Way Home,” that saloon-rock sway emerges, while the band goes dreamy for “Heavy Poems.” The influences range from Texas troubadours like Townes Van Zandt to beatnik-era early Dylan (and mid-’60s Bob as well), which ain’t a bad bunch of touchstones at all.
Darryl Morden - Buzzine (Mar 24, 2009)
Too bad there’s no more Lone Star Café because the alt.country sound of New York keeps getting sharper and sharper. Cassady and his pals continue to merge the best of various fringe and underground sounds into a special Americana gumbo that you label that way because there’s no other way to make the uninitiated understand. Would it be so weird for Townes Van Zandt to hang out with Lou Reed? Perhaps not as the journey through the mirror these two would take together would be really off the hook. A solid date, the crew’s third, that needs attention from all the cool kids on the block.
Chris Spector - Midwest Record Review (Jan 27, 2009)
Never one for the easily-categorized mainstream, Joe Cassady has always championed his own unique sound, utilizing clever Dylanesque-Subterannean-Homesick-Blues captures of lyrical turns, backed by a simple garage-rockin' band on his previous Avenue A release, "What's Your Sign?".
This time around however, on "The 47th Problem", this band's flood lights have been cranked up all the way to high beam...... and People, ---- this ain't yer mama's art-rock any more!
In fact, Cassady is no longer the cool pen-as-a-sword poet at all here. Instead, he is a bold painter of musical imagery: lyrics all softly defined brush strokes, supplemented by the pallette of Robert Bonhomme's thundering drums, Aaron Gardner's slinky bass, and Anthony Bax's crystalline percussion hurling dramatic handfuls of color and depth. The artistic signature to seal the deal belongs to Shu Nakamura, mando-guitar / dobro / keyboard artiste extraordinaire, who convinces us that he can take a guitar to places where man has never gone before!
The resulting piece: think Jackson Pollock in Ryan Adams' "walkin' on a razor blade" persona (Ryan --- pay Joe for this line).
An avalanche of drums, guitars, and bass punctuates the album's title cut, where Cassady's breathy vocals (so close, you'll get razor burn) lure the listener into its hands-in-pockets philosophizing of love's inconsistencies before showering them in the snowfall. Get up, dust yourself off, catch your breath, and enjoy being knocked off your feet again and again.
A perfect set up for Track 2, "Thin Ice" (no pun intended), one of the album's lower-key numbers, highlighted by Nakamura's haunting keyboards.
The can't-miss on this album is the sheerly addictive "G3 Blues" (damn!). Cassady's writing is at his finest, and gets kicked up to full-blown, melt-down boogie. "Joshua" tells the tale of the prodigal son via a Sunday School lesson from the Church of Steve Earle, circa 1990 A.D. "9th Floor" is the musical equivalent of dancing in the edge of the ocean surf, and then being washed to your knees by a crashing breaker, and you'll want to experience it over and over again.
Even the understated "The Only Thing" refuses to come off as pretentious, with its "only you that holds you back" message, tempered through soft, jazzy soul.
As for "Big Wave" --- I have the perfect slot for this wonderful piece: it deserves to serve as a theme song on a really great episode of TV drama (I'm thinking a well-scripted episode of "House MD"?).
Hats off to definitive backing vocals from Melissa Masser, and, as on "What's Your Sign?", Justin Masi's brilliantly delectable artwork is a treat.
With "The 47th Problem", Joe Cassady has finally found his Sound.
Torchy Blaine--Host of "Guitar Town" WDVR FM (Jan 21, 2009)
Joe Cassady kicks off The 47th Problem with a thunderous hi-energy title half typical of the disc, although his singing, being of the folk persuasion, isn't quite up to the song's demands. Someone, either him or Shu Nakamura (I suspect the latter), knows how to crunch and wail on lead guitar, though, and more than a few rivetheads are going to be jealous of the track's hooks and chords. On Thin Ice, Cassady backs off into what's much more his vocal forte: bluesy folk-rockin' bleeding over into rock & roll.
The packaging for 47th Problem is superb, a quadra-fold extravaganza featuring Justin Masi's great cartooning pregnant with symbolism and existentialist angst mirroring and metaphorically exceeding Cassady's lyrics. Beirut Boogie sparks back up with a slide guitar and the title cut's chunky rhythms. Find My Way Home, however, places Cassady back in his element, almost jug-oriented in its Appalachian feel, his backing band bedding him down with a chaw of terbacky and a generous applejack sway. Willie Mays is a lament laden song with more killer guitar work atop moody forward motion, a mini-saga rich and satisfying.
The production here is quite good, spacious on the mellow numbers, very well layered in the complex rockers, everything supporting the guy's writing, but his singing is the weakest element of an otherwise very catchy release. Too often, his vocal timbre is a bit weak and unconfident, not full-throated and sometimes flat, not to mention lacking tremolo when that's very much wanted. His real milieu is a bayou backwoods threnody, not chart burners, though the band's more than capable of both. Listen to Big Wave and hear precisely what I mean. Cassady's in his element there, so either he's going to have to switch fortes or bring in another vocalist (hint: the band is superb in their backing vocals, so maybe…) if he wants to continue to vend leonine rock and roll and remain authentic.
Mark S. Tucker - Folk and Acoustic Music Exchange (Mar 8, 2009)
The 47th Problem is the Pythagorean Theorem of Geometry. It's not clearly related to this release, which is rock-flavored folk and country with a singer/songwriter outlook.
Cassady seems greatly influenced by Bob Dylan, even using his vocal inflections, although he is a better singer. Like Dylan, his lyrics are filled with metaphors and complicated passages.
The CD's first line is ''I can write you letters but I can't pronounce your name.'' ''The Only Thing'' begins with ''I stood at my window this morning and watched dawn's fingers peel away the night.'' ''Heavy Poems'' is more earthy: ''I was loaded on the floor, passed out in my clothes.'' You have to listen closely.
There are varied themes: traveling and returning home, memories, and even one song called ''Willie Mays.'' Cassady often takes the viewpoint of a traveler who has seen too much, or as an observer of a vanishing American way of life. The 11 tracks alternate between fast and slow numbers. Although each have the full band of lead guitar, bass and drums, the slow ones are largely based on Cassady's acoustic guitar and have a coffeehouse or front-porch picking sound. The faster ones are in a rock or country rock vein, buoyed by Shu Nakamura's guitar, mando-guitar, dobro and occasional keyboards.
Dave Howell - The Morning Call (Mar 7, 2009)
Joe Cassady's latest opus '47th Problem' is best solved sitting in a dark subterranean cafe with a bottle of Chianti, or driving through an abandoned Pennsylvanian coal town in a silver Aston Martin, on a snowy day, with the top down. Like a 21st century carnival barker, in his left hand, Cassady holds an iron link chain with an unseen anchor that grabs into an almost forgotten American past. In his right he holds the beacon and tickets to the future. Step into his tent .
Anonymous (Jan 2, 2009)
